hina was across the river from On-sung so all I had to do was to cross the river. Because I lived in the town growing up, I knew all the guards and at what time they always came and went.
My husband couldn’t come, because he has a lot of brothers and sisters in North Korea, and if he defected it would affect their lives. We had two daughters. One was ten years old and one was five years old. I took the older daughter with me when I crossed the river. I found that China was a very nice place to live because there was rice everywhere. People just threw the rice away because they were full. I was surprised to see so many people living without starvation. I thought I should take the younger daughter too, so I went back to get her.
I was walking alongside the river in the early evening, going to get my younger daughter, and the North Korean soldiers caught me. They fired questions at me: “Where are you coming from? Why are you walking along the river? Are you trying to cross the river?” I said, “Oh no, my house is just over there and I am going back to my house.” But I was wearing a Chinese perfume, and in On-sung nobody had any perfume. Also, I was wearing nice Chinese clothing—a cotton jacket and cotton pants. The North Koreans just knew I was coming from China, so they took me and imprisoned me for four months.
There were about ten women in a room that was nine-by-seven feet. Ten women can only fit in that like sardines, all lying down. There was one water faucet in the room and one toilet. There was a pipe by the ceiling and water was always dripping out. Except for at bedtime, I had to sit up and I couldn’t move. Everybody had to sit up and we could only move for five minutes every two hours. It was our punishment—sitting still. At night when people slept we could get up and move around.
There was one woman who had given birth to a baby about a month before I arrived, and her body was still unrecovered. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t walk from her spot to the toilet, so we had to carry her. She started to cry and shout that she could not walk, so they took her out after ten days and sent her back home.
I was beaten by the guards. I bled. I was tortured in the prison. They kicked me and beat me until I became unconscious. I was unconscious for 20 hours. I was lying down in my blood, in the room with the other nine women. The other women tried to clean me up and help me, but there was no medicine or doctor in the prison. About ten days after I woke up, there was an outbreak of typhus and I got it. With high fever, the body will tremble. Three or four women had typhus during this time. When we recovered, the others got it, back and forth. It passed down the hallway to the other cells, so we could listen to the other women at night, when it was quiet, and they’d be moaning.
During this time, my ten-year-old daughter was in China with a couple who felt very sorry for me and her. I was able to defect again after I got out of prison, and I paid a Chinese broker to take me and my daughters to Seoul. It cost about $7,000 total, and this is money I was able to pay using the resettlement money I received from the South Korean government upon my arrival. On-sung is a rural city, so when it rains everybody has to wear rain boots. When I got to South Korea, the first thing I did was go to the department store to buy rain boots for my kids. The guy in the store asked my why I wanted to buy rain boots in Seoul and I said, “Isn’t it rainy in Seoul? I don’t want my children’s feet to get dirty.” He thought it was very funny.
AS TOLD TO AMIE BARRODALE
TO BE CONTINUED:
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